From Library Journal
These two productions seem the literary equivalent of elevator music. On the first tape, very short poems by Tu Fu, Basho, or Li Po, with no mention of their nationality or that these are even translations, appear beside the single, most familiar quatrain from Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat." Of what use are these (often overly dramatic) fragments? Yet room is made for the 23rd Psalm, "Amazing Grace," and "'T'was the Night Before Christmas." Stefan Rudnicki, reading from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, does a good job of conveying the sound of the original, while poems by Fran?ois Villon, Friedrich Von Schiller, or Gerard de Nerval would seem to have been written in modern English. The second tape is even more frustrating, if only because the poets, if not the poems, will be more familiar. It's good to have grade-school favorites such as "Casey at the Bat" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" in easy listening range, but "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land"? And then only an eight-line poem by William Carlos Williams. The balance seems terribly wrong here. Since nothing on these tapes enhances a listener's appreciation of poetry, it's impossible to recommend them. Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with BEST POEMS OF ALL TIME, Part 2.]--Probably "favorite" or "most popular" would be a better adjective for a collection that brings together "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Casey at the Bat." Editor Pockell has put together an excellent selection of standard poems from the ancients (a taste of Homer and Sappho) to the 1850s, and from the 1850s to around 1950 (except for Maya Angelou). Out of a growing number of programs of classic poetry now on the market, this one is ideally matched to the student and the general reader unaccustomed to hearing poetry read aloud, and is an especially good bargain for the number of selections offered. The readers are uniformly good, and many are excellent; and the readings of difficult poems like Hopkins's "Spring and Fall" and of Plath's "Daddy" are especially effective and enlightening. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
